"Lovely staff but overworked"

My mother was transferred to the ERI from St John's in January, fasted a few times to late in the day and admitted already losing weight.

I raised concerns with staff each day and eventually had to phone the patient experience team to complain as I was then told after 2 days, that there would need to be a 3 day food chart set up before any supplements could be organised. For a woman barely eating anything this was scary, also I was told I could bring something in from home if I wanted, but nothing was available in the hospital to buy and Armadale too far for me to travel to and from easily, pretty bad family have to provide appropriate nutrition to support an inpatient.

The consultant that afternoon ordered a supplement which was reassuring, also staff then took my mums weight (so lost 12lbs in a few months), started the food chart from the day before and a dietitian also turned up the next day - she agreed that Fortesip was required twice daily - shame it took a call to complain to get this to happen. The food was awful, my mum basically survived on ice cream and forte sip, she had no appetite when in the hospital but immediately on returning home it has reappeared thankfully,

Something needs to be done to make the food more nutritious and palatable, all the other patients I spoke to agreed it was horrible. At the weekend there was one round of teas on Saturday afternoon and nothing else, is this normal?

The hospital staff were all very dedicated - doctors, nursing, AHP's, domestics and porters, but so overworked it was unbelieveable. Unless it was an emergency it took a while to get actions completed, not surprising as as soon as they left one area they were jumped on to do 3 more things. The dedication of the staff is commendable, but burnout must happen regularly, I am not sure what is used to calculate staffing levels, but if I had not been there to help my mum all day from 8 - 9 am through to 6 - 7 pm then I hate to think what would have happened. The open visiting is a blessing, though like all changes has its downsides, one set of visitors stayed until 10pm, preventing my mother and another elderly patient from being able to sleep, maybe say after 8pm only carers can stay, unless they go to a day area or something similar?

I also feel the staff are not specifically trained in Dementia, there was no attempt to gather information relating to Getting to Know You, they were all very compassionate and caring though, also person centred which was lovely, so specific dementia training would be all that was needed and paperwork/patient information notices to support GtKY.

In summary, lovely staff in ward 106, including AHP's, very kind and supportive consultant Miss Thomasett, overworked and understaffed generally, poor nutrition processes, lack of dementia training and abysmal food. I am happy to be contacted over this and talk through my complaints in more detail